The Taliban Shuffle_ Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan - Kim Barker [122]
CHAPTER 26
WHEN THE MAN COMES AROUND
In some ways, I hoped Obama would be the savior. After he switched the war’s focus from Iraq to this region, I thought that maybe everything would turn around, that Afghanistan and Pakistan would suddenly reverse course and miraculously start improving. Selfishly, I figured my job was safe. After all, Obama was from Chicago, as was my newspaper, and if this region was seen as the most important foreign story in the world in the coming years, surely the Tribune would need its own correspondent. So I launched my own tactical surge in preparation for the upcoming U.S. surge. I knew the United States could do only so much inside stubbornly sovereign Pakistan; I planned to spend as much time as possible following the Americans in Afghanistan. But I needed to cut my costs. I decided to move from my giant house in Islamabad to a friend’s house and use the savings to rent a room in Kabul. I decided to cut my fixer costs, and offer Farouq a take-it-or-leave-it deal of $1,600 a month, regardless of whether I was in Afghanistan. For most Afghans, this was a fine salary. But not for Farouq.
He was already upset with me for a variety of reasons. Given my stress, I had been short with him, not treating him like before. I was treating him like my employee—not like my friend. I was tired of worrying about money and scrimping like a freelancer. I was tired of stacking all my interviews over a few days, so I could pay Farouq for only a few days’ work, which meant he was always on call, unable to work for anyone else. I was tired of his occasional macho rants. Given the boom in interest in Afghanistan, Farouq could make much more money anywhere else. Both of us were frustrated.
“You can think about it,” I said, after making my offer.
“No, Kim. I can tell you what I think right now. I can’t work for that amount of money. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too,” I said.
We pledged to stay friends, but I knew we wouldn’t talk for a while. We were both raw, mainly over the irony that when the world finally realized that Afghanistan was circling the drain, so were both of our jobs. In slight shock over my bold move, I hired someone else.
I flew back to Pakistan, where Nawaz Sharif again made noise about restoring the judges fired sixteen months earlier by Musharraf. That old story—he was like Musharraf with the miscreants. But President Zardari had just punched himself in the eye by removing Sharif’s brother as the head of the Punjab government. A planned march by the long-suffering lawyers—who by this point had been in a monotonous state of protest for almost two years, occasionally staging symbolic three-hour hunger strikes—suddenly had momentum. The Sharifs threw all their significant political weight behind the lawyers. I sent a text message to Sharif, asking him to call.
“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said when he called that Friday evening. “Where have you been?”
“Afghanistan,” I replied. It was easier that way.
Nothing was mentioned about the iPhone, or our past meeting, or his offer.
Then Zardari banned the march and put Sharif and various opponents under house arrest—moves that only drew attention to the march and guaranteed its significance. Zardari acted like Musharraf, but he forgot one thing—he didn’t have the army behind him. The Sharifs and their key aides plowed out of house arrest in SUVs. The police were not about to stop them. Their convoy moved out of Lahore, paralyzing the country and forcing Zardari’s hand. Diplomats like Hillary Clinton twisted various arms.
And suddenly, surprisingly, stunningly, after midnight we heard that the country’s prime minister would soon restore the judges. Unlike many rumors, this one seemed true. I rushed over to the former chief justice’s house, where I encountered one of the few true magical unscripted moments I had ever experienced in Pakistan—actual joy, a sense of disbelief, that finally, after so long, the lawyers’ movement actually might